BROADER IMPACT OF MEETING: DISCUSSION, MINIREVIEWS, AND LIVE WEB CAST, INDUSTRIAL SPONSORSHIP

1. PROTEIN AGGREGATION AND AMYLOID FORMATION INSYSTEMIC AND NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASE:PHYSICAL, MOLECULAR AND BIOLOGICAL APPROACHES, EPFL, Lausanne Switzerland, July 16-19, 2005 co-sponsored by NSF International Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter (DMR-0409937,L. Coleman; U. of California) • This meeting brought together physicists, chemists, biologists, and MDs for an interdisciplinary overview at the cutting edge of research on protein aggregation phenomena generally and amyloidogenic proteins in particular • Among basic science highlights was a discussion of the minimal infectious unit for prion diseases. At right we see the core of the beta helical prion trimer (BPT) proposed by the Prusiner lab at UCSF (A) and the modified domain swapped prion trimer (Yang, Onuchic, Levine, Cox, FASEB J in press, 2005) which provides a stabilizing hydrogen bonding network to the BPT model and relaxes elastic stress in the yellow hinge region (C). • The meeting featured a session devoted to the use of amyoids for ``good’’ in biology and materials

2. BROADER IMPACT OF MEETING: DISCUSSION, MINIREVIEWS, AND LIVE WEB CAST, INDUSTRIAL SPONSORSHIP • The meeting was discussion oriented, with about half the time devoted to presentations and about half to discussions, which made it particularly well suited to the >50% of participants who were graduated students or postdoctoral researchers. A concerted effort was made to include questions from junior scientists. • The meeting will be summarized in minireviews in the Journal of Molecular Neuroscience • The meeting was webcast live to preapproved viewers—about 40 from around the world took advantage. • The webcast will be archived at the i2cam web site (i2cam.org) with most presenters having agreed to this subject to embargoes on prepublication material. The archive will follow the format below, with power point slides when allowed synchronized to a flash format video (with sound) of the lecturer. • As much as is possible (depending upon local web links, etc) I2CAM will live webcast and archive those webcasts. All archived webcasts will be publicly accessible, while live webcasts will be via preapproved limited admission. • The meeting also received support from eight biotech companies and one anonymous foundation